Advocates Rally Against Proposed Mission Condos

A coalition of housing advocates, activists, and Mission residents joined forces at 16th street BART Plaza on Saturday afternoon to rally against a proposed large-scale market-rate housing development at 16th and Mission Street.

As Mission Local reported earlier, the housing development, which was proposed by Maximus Real Estate Partners, would build 351 housing units and 32,000 square feet of retail space at 1979 Mission Street and could replace several existing storefronts; including Walgreens, Hwa Lei Market, City Club Bar and Burger King. The project is at a preliminary stage and has not yet been approved by the Planning Department.

At the rally, members of the new La Plaza 16 Coalición/ The Plaza 16 Coalition (consisting of a wide range of local member organizations including the Mission Economic Development Agency, Mission Neighborhood Resource Center, and PODER), gathered to also advocate for affordable alternatives. The 16th Street and Mission Street area, they argued, has the highest concentration of Single Room Occupancy Hotels in the Mission and it is unclear how the proposed development will accommodate the city’s affordable housing requirements.

Maria Zamudio, the San Francisco Housing Rights Organizer with Causa Justicia: Just Cause, said the coalition was created after members first heard about the market-rate housing development, which will mainly consist of two to four unit apartments renting at $3,500 to $5,000 per month.

“That’s a level that folks that live in this intersection would never be able to afford,” she said. “If building market rate housing was going be what solved the housing crisis then we would have seen it happen.”

Zamudio said that more than 300 units of market rate housing have been built, or proposed, in 2013. “And they haven’t lessened the housing crisis in the Mission,” she remarked. “Rents are still going up, evictions are still going up, folks are still getting harassed by their landlords to leave.”

For Christopher Harris, a recent San Francisco transplant from Los Angeles, the lack of Mission-based affordable housing has gotten in the way of getting off the streets. “I’m currently homeless at the time, and I’m out here for equal housing opportunity,” he said. “It’s so hard to get a place, The rent’s so expensive. I’ve been trying to get on every list that I can get. I’ve filled out 10 applications in the last month and I’m still here.”

Harris said that San Francisco offers better services for the homeless than Los Angeles but falls short when it comes to affordable housing. “It’s 700, 800, 900 dollars a month. I can’t afford it.”

In addition to housing affordability, protestors voiced concerns about the shuttering of local businesses and other neighborhood institutions. Paula Tejada, the owner and founder of the empanada cafe Chile Lindo, said she thinks the proposed 10-story structure would crowd out or shut down local businesses.

“There needs to be consideration for low and medium income people so that the business owners are not displaced and this construction is not so invasive,” she said. “If I have construction going on outside of my business, I’d want to close and open up when they’re done. It is so invasive. If there’s tons of construction and cranes and noise, who is going to want to come here?”

Tejada added that residents are also concerned about construction impeding student learning at Marshall Elementary School, which sits behind the proposed development. “When you have that amount of construction work, how are the children going to study?” she wondered.

With a looming eviction notice and small business in the heart of the construction battleground, Tejada has become a vocal spokeswoman for The Plaza 16 Coalition and the focus of recent media attention. A Mission resident of over two decades, Tejada worries that if the development crowds out longtime local businesses the neighborhood may lose some of its flavor – concern that several other advocates voiced at Saturday’s protest.

“Often times there’s a false choice that gets talked about in working class neighborhoods of color,” said Zamudio. “You either let gentrification happen and people get pushed out but that’s the loss for cleaner neighborhoods, safer neighborhoods. Or, you do not allow gentrification to happen and you get urban slums. We need to center communities, existing residents, and folks that use these public spaces in the conversation and have them sit at the table to get real solutions. Otherwise the problems are just going to be moved out and there’s never going to be a real solution. Instead of the problem being at 16th and Mission, it’s just going to be somewhere else.”

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178 Comments

Zamudio said that more than 300 units of market rate housing have been built, or proposed, in 2013. “And they haven’t lessened the housing crisis in the Mission,”
Yeah, that’s why we need MORE housing.
Clueless…

Just because SF can never build enough housing does not mean that we should not build any.

If the money is there to build these homes, then we should build them. Partly for the associated BMR units that will be part of the deal, and partly to provide an alternative to more affluent people buying up existing housing stock, which will drive up housing costs.

If every new affluent arrival had a new condo waiting for him, there would be less TICs formed out of existing rental buildings.

As long as real estate speculators can make super profits by converting rental housing into TIC’s and condos, they will, regardless of how much new luxury housing their brethren develop. Building more luxury housing hastens gentrification and the incentives to convert existing rental housing. That’s why the real estate boosters push so hard for it, while positing disingenuous falsehoods that its development is good for current poor and working class residents.

RE development is an inherently risky business because all the costs have to be paid before a single unit can be sold, and a project can take up to a decade, meaning much can go wrong during that time.

So the rewards of development have to be high, or else nobody would risk it. And without such development, the vast majority of the existing housing stock would never have been built and, no doubt, your own home is the result of a speculative investment.

But again, it is your distaste for someone making a profit that you are bringing up here, rather than a serious consideration of whether these homes are needed. And clearly they are needed because other similar projects do quickly sell out once they are finished.

If existing homes were being destroyed as part of this, you might have a point. But they aren’t and so you don’t.

The only reason TIC formation happens at all is because people want to own their own homes rather than rent, and because there is a value gap created by rent control, such that a SF home is worth too little as a rental because of control on rents.

That said, most SF TIC buyers are residents who previously rented. The two TIC owners I know well personally are a teacher and a nurse. Are they the kid of people you want to not provide home ownership opportunities for?

Meanwhile, your idea that new homes should be 100% affordable is clearly not possible. Nowhere anywhere on the planet can do that, nor should do that. It’s impossible to build a cheap home in SF so what happens with a so-called affordable home is that the resident gets some form of subsidy. IOW, someone else pays for it.

There will only ever be a limited amount of funds for BMR construction because the voters do not want to pay higher taxes. So building homes for profit is the best solution – the rich get some new homes and the poor do as well.

I don’t want to live in a City that only the affluent can live in – because that’s not a City, that’s a gated community. However, no one is entitled to anything upon arriving here and I am honestly tired, like John and others, of being accused of not “caring about poor people” because we actually can afford to live here. It is envy and it is spite and as long as that attitude continues, NO solutions are going to come out of anything. John is also right – you don’t solve a housing crisis by building all below market rate housing. You know what that creates? A ghetto – which is exactly what happened in the Western Addition after the “clean up” of Fillmore Street. This City needs more housing – it needs more density. It needs removal of stupid restrictions that don’t allow single family homeowners to expand and use their space to open more units. There was a study recently that if we allowed just 1/3 of the single family homes in the Sunset to add a rental unit, not only would we solve the current crisis (because that would bring enough units online), those units would be affordable as well because the Sunset is one of the last somewhat affordable places in this City. Housing needs to be built everywhere – at all price points. But that will never happen as long as you’ve got a group like John is pointing out that is unwilling to even discuss reasonable solutions because they can’t get past their own envy and hypocrisy.

The pro luxury development and pro economic displacement crowd should start reading conservative free market theory publications. Both the Economist and Forbes are taking issues head on, and siding with protections against economic displacement. Really? Really.

BTW the argument that all housing is built for profit is false. There are plenty of low income developments in SF, some quite recent. But not enough. And these don’t address the hard working people in the middle who still can’t compete for 3000$/month or 1M$ studios etc. And it is true that all recent and upcoming developments are luxury, sometimes with a small fraction of BMR. This still leaves nothing for the middle …

Basically SF has no urban planning, it is a for-maximum-profit free for all. I don’t see how developers and landlords could still be aggressively lobbying against any changes in housing policy and are bent on destroying rent control. Not enough profit? You want to guarantee financial security for how many of your future generations?

Meanwhile we watch as long term affordable establishments of various kinds are replaced daily by 4$ toast, 15$ sandwiches and cocktails. More luxury housing obviously accelerates this …

Below market rate housing still has to be profitable for the private developer that builds it, even if the City decides to subsidize it. Otherwise, banks will not finance its construction. Normally, buildings with below market rate units add market rate units in order to make the entire project profitable and get the necessary bank investment to build. And since when was either breaking even or turning a profit a bad thing? I thought this was the US?

it’s great that you are using thoughtful arguments in this otherwise heated discussion, but I respectfully disagree with you on several matters.

for starters, you seem to suggest that pro luxury development people are also pro-displacement — that is not necessarily the case and frankly, seems to solicit an emotional response. so best not to make accusations that cannot be verified.

you are correct that there have been low-income developments, but you seem to suggest that all development should be of this type. there are simply not enough resources to build enough bmr/affordable housing developments. the groups who already do that – Eden, Bridge, Mercy, etc, have a very hard time putting the funds together to finance projects. Doubtful that there’s a lot more out there to be found.

as for market rate with BMR units — those BMR units do not get built without the market-rate units, and market rate units do not pencil out financially unless they can show a profit — and that profit is not as significant as you think it is.

finally — to say that SF has “no planning” is completely out of touch. There are many professional planners trying very hard to represent many factions of the City to make sure it is built in a way that serves all its residents.

There is not a more planned big city in the US than San Francisco. BMR units will never substitute for the market providing housing for most people and the overplanning in this city has failed us. Real estate speculators built every neighborhood in San Francisco

I heard that SFUSD sold the property right across the street from this proposed development – for affordable housing. It’s been sitting vacant for years. It’s the property that Mayor Lee offered to the Occupy movement a couple years back. Mission Local – can you look into this? I heard it from a Marshall Elementary parent – but would be great to get confirmation on whether that blighted lot will be developed into affordable units.

There is no other possible explanation for someone to oppose the building of a home for affluent people. Because if that home is not built, not one poor person will get a cheap home nor benefit in any way. In fact, the development would provide some BMR homes, rather than none if it is not built.

So the only other explanation is spite. They simply are saying that if we can’t have cheap homes, then nobody should have any homes. AKA envy.

Most affordable homes in SF happen because of the set-asides and fees from developments like these, so opposing such developments means you oppose BMR housing too.

That said, I offered two explanations – the other being NIMBY’ism i.e. the position of opposing all new buildings on principle.

NIMBYism and envy are the two forces in this city that prevent homes being built at all price levels.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a sound?

If John says something, is it the only possible explanation?

Once upon a time, this city opened itself to free thinkers, refugees, artists, non-conformists, iconoclasts, gold diggers and virtually anyone else. Now, only money grubbers need apply. And their most vocal spokesman uses hundreds of words to express his most simplistic of messages: poor people are garbage, money is the only legitimate desire, opposition to luxury housing development is envious NIMBYism.

When you name is on the deed the Ellis act is the law and you can use your property as you see fit, thinking it it’s your property just because you had your lazy ass subsidized for years by rent control is theft! Pure and simple…..

You just found out about rent control? Did someone beg you to buy the property at a steep discount? Seems like very poor business planning to make investments weighed down by laws which might not be in your favor…

There were many more Ellis acts in the 2000’s than now.. But the property thieves can make so much more noise today, using social media that the tech people, they envy and hate created for them to vent on. Isn’t it ironic ?

You said there is no other possible explanation, which is laughably false, and ignores the quite common explanation that an increase in luxury housing in a neighborhood often serves to increase property values to the point where all other housing in the neighborhood increases in price as well.

Sorry but I asked for credible reasons. It’s credible that some might envy the rich and it’s credible that someone might not want a high-rise in their back yard. It isn’t credible that neither apply but that you don’t want it built anyway because of some upside-down theory that less supply means lower prices.

Supply isn’t built equal. Increasing the supply of luxury yachts isn’t going to lead to a lot more people getting yachts. Besides, the relationship between higher property values and increased rents is well established and likewise the development of luxury facilities with increased property values is also well known.

You’re being disingenuous and rejecting reason based arguments that don’t comply to your narrow emotion based worldview.

Besides, it’s simply not credible that so many people would protest solely out of spite. That’s ridiculous.

For you to discount the well established correlations between developments and property values, and between property values and rental values as a “theory” that’s counter intuitive is foolishly naive at best.

You have no evidence to support your emotional, class war inciting arguments, yet you refuse to accept fact based arguments that contradict them. This is the very definition of narrow mindedness (not to mention willful ignorance).

Rents will increase to what the market can bear, where they aren’t limited, so if new rentals are an average of 3,500 to 5000 dollars a month, other landlords can be expected to want to raise their rents to an equivalent amount.

Therefore it’s perfectly natural for people with low income, paying low rents would be opposed to high rent developments being built in their area.

Your emotional arguments regarding envy are still ridiculous and you’ve never addressed why someone would organize a protest simply out of spite and not self interest. Your claim that there is no other possible explanation is absurd. You can try to pick apart my rational arguments as much as you want, but it does nothing to mitigate how idiotic sounding your emotional arguments are.

Once again, not talking about housing in general. I’m talking about housing for affluent people. If you had a shred of intellectual integrity you wouldn’t go about trying to deflect and change the subject so much.

> There is no other possible explanation for someone to oppose the building of a home for affluent people.

That is what you said. You cannot defend it, so you make up ridiculous claims that I want to reduce housing stock instead.

I’ve provided evidence to support my claim, now come up with your own evidence to back up your own claims or just shut up.

The only person pushing class warfare here is the commenter who stated “There is no other possible explanation (but envy) for someone to oppose the building of a home for affluent people.”

Just because you claim something, doesn’t make it true. I have provided evidence to back my claims; the facts are unbiased. You have nothing to support your position but your own stubbornness and a dogmatic, class war inciting world view.

But I’ve still proven my case, provided evidence of my position, and refuted your faulty claim that Ed Lee’s election can be credibly inferred to back the position you claim.

In all rational circles, this would be sufficient. It is only against someone such as yourself who has made his mind up in advance and refuses to accept any evidence that goes against his narrow, class warfare pushing world view that my arguments don’t matter, and I accept that. I only hope others read this and see how empty and ridiculous your arguments become when your lies are so systematically taken apart and destroyed.

Most people are neither and the idea that we should only build homes for people who fit some ideolog’s idea of politically acceptable and correct is repugnant to anyone who claims to care about equity and justice.

BTW, i’m still waiting for your proof that the less of a product on offer, the cheaper it gets?

Fyodor, two beers and others cite a study that shows that increasing the supply of housing by building housing that costs more than existing housing raises the price of the existing housing. Furthermore, the argument you keep using about destroying units to lower price is a red herring to distract from empirical evidence that contradicts the strict applicability of supply and demand at its most simplistic for a complex, differentiated market like housing.

The theories of supply and demand are more complicated than “raising the supply lowers prices.”

In fact, orthodox economics teaches that in free markets, profit equals zero. They missed on that one also.

Current residents know that building expensive apartment/condo developments will raise property values and rents in the neighborhood (absent a macroeconomic shock). That’s why most property owners and real estate interests are pushing so hard for these developments and why most renters, especially those with lower incomes, oppose them.

But hey, if you like to type the word “envy” a lot, have at it. You don’t stand behind your words, so who cares?

Thank you landline, for so masterfully explaining and summing it up what I was trying to explain to our bufoonish friend here.

John, you are once again ignoring all evidence that contradicts your dogmatic ideology and class warfare inciting narrative. If any of us could “magically” create 100,000 new condos in the Mission, we might not be having this conversation, but the rest of us live in the land of reality and deal in facts. Since you are so clearly divorced from reality I totally get why you cannot understand the complexity of markets when it comes to housing.

We have set up entitlements and expectations that can no longer be met, and the journey from where we are to where we must go will be painful for many.

The fact that some people might need to relocate a few miles is as unavoidable as it is necessary. That number will be mitigated if we aggressively build new homes with a sufficient density and volume.

The housing advocates are a big part of the reason why we have a housing problem, as their policies inhibit new construction and deter property owners from renting out their units.

Yes, not only are there other parts of SF that are considerably cheaper, like Sunset, Bayview and Excelsior, but there are also the neighboring cities and counties, which are significantly more affordable and only a few miles and minutes away.

Not everyone has to live in the more expensive parts of the more expensive cities. That’s why we have BART.

The Mission district was home to mostly Hispanic low and middle class hard working people that make the community rich in culture..To build $3500 a month apartments on 16th and mission is saying directly…”HEY POOR PEOPLE, LEAVE, THE RICHER PEOPLE ARE COMING AND YOUR NOT INVITED…Gentrification at its best

A century ago, it was of a similar density as SF now, and people who believed in market forces said “Build! Build more and the prices will come down!”.

Well, guess what? … They built to the point where the island is a cold, ugly forest of skyscrapers, and IT’S MORE EXPENSIVE THAN EVER!

Building won’t work – it will just create more demand for corporate drone housing.

The solution is to remove the welcome mat from big tech. In other words, do the exact opposite to what tax-break tech-whore Ed Lee has done: tax big tech MORE than other sectors. Tax them until they leave.

Good riddance in advance.

The ultra-creepy surveillance/advertising/social-control industry is antithetical to the values of SF and does not belong here.

A BART station drives development in that area. Build it and they will come.

But the main purpose is surely to get workers into SF for work.

That said, if BART is extended to San Jose and allowed to run back up the peninsula to Milbrae, we’d have a significantly better networked system allowing for populations to be diversified across a much larger area.

The professional center of the Bay Area is already somewhere south of SF.

LOL! You are sadly misinformed. Harlem was developed at the turn of the previous century. It was dramatically overbuilt and thus the prices dropped below what developers had paid to build it. Consequently the target market of the development; WASPs, did not move in. Rather, East Harlem became one of the largest Italian neighbourhoods outside of Italy, and West Harlem became the 3rd largest concentration of Jewish people in the world after Warsaw and the Lower East Side. These communities started leaving by the 1930s, and now there are only churches in west Harlem that sport Stars of David as a reflection that they used to by Synagogues, and a minuscule Italian community in East Harlem. The prices came WAY down, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and African Americans moved in, and those that strove, bought brownstones for a fraction of what they are now worth. Oddly, the Italian & Jewish demographic communities are reviving, including in Washington Heights to the north.

There are literally tens of thousands of subsidized housing units in Harlem. That is affordable housing that is well below market value. The example you site, though extremely expensive is a ten minute walk from an Ivy League institution (Columbia University). The average price for a Brownstone is about 1.2 million. The majority of these were long ago cut up into apartments though they were originally built as single family dwellings when Harlem was radically over-built. Many of these were bought by members of the community many years ago (African Americans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans) when they were much less expensive and they are now rented out at very high prices to anyone arriving more recently.

16th & Mission Streets has been a slum for years. Before it was a great mix of people, lots of good mom-pop businesses, wonderful movie houses. Now it is the dump of SF; there is no culture, unless you consider crime, filth as it! The area is never safe to go around there, even in the day time. This project is the perfect way to clean up the area, make it safe for everyone, plus bring new housing & businesses to that stretch of the Mission.

Hate to break it to you but no new development will clean up the area unless it demolishes the SRO hotels along this strip (which the non profits will never allow) Until then, it remains the first stop for newly released convicts and parolees and one of thier few options for housing that does not require a job, a FICO and a security deposit.

There isn’t a housing shortage. There’s an *affordable* housing shortage. Building luxury condos not only does not abate the skyrocketing housing costs, it actually contributes to the price escalation.

The only way to make housing affordable is to provide affordable housing.

Refusing to build luxury lofts will prevent many people from being evicted, because without the property value bubble caused by the building of the luxury lofts, landlords wouldn’t be trying to Ellis their tenants to capitalize on the boom. i.e. the price escalation effect the luxury loft development is causing is the current lure to landlords to empty their properties out; The eviction rampage will subside when this multi-asset bubble collapses.

All the evidence indicates the exact opposite. If the affluent newcomers cannot find a new build condo to buy, their frustrated demand for homes will increase the incentive to Ellis, TIC and condo.

If your theory was correct, then we can have affordable housing simply by demolishing lots of homes. That’s totally illogical and counter-intuitive.

The bigger problem is pushing the cost of subsidizing peoples’ homes onto property owners, as rent control does. The result is that landlords look for any opportunity to take their untis off the market, if not by Ellis then by any other means possible.

I’m fairly typical in that I have largely moved away from long-term rentals. I either convert and see the units, or do short-term corporate or tourist lets. It’s just not worthwhile to take the risk of being stuck with a low rent tenant for life.

In 2009 there was an opportunity tom address the causes of the collapse. Instead, Obama created moral hazard by refusing to prosecute any of the Wall St banksters for committing the greatest financial heist in history, and Bernanke kicked the can down the road by suppressing interest rates far longer than healthy, and by buying up hundreds of billions of dollars of cratered mortgage-backed securities at 100% on the dollar.

The result of this is that we now are in an even bigger bubble than the previous one, which means we are headed for another epic collapse.

Why should the working tax-payers have to bail out Chase, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Wells? In the real economy, their is real risk, because businesses are allowed to fail. Why are banks above the law, and exempt from the market forces that would destroy business that would fail if they didn’t control government policy?

Wall St is not allowed to fail, which is an implicit guarantee that your property values will be artificially inflated..This is property as theft, and the beneficiaries of this policy are thieves.

TwoBeers, I agree to some extent. I certainly think that GM should have been allowed to fail, and probably at least a couple of the major banks could have failed rather than be backstopped.

But QE has allowed an orderly situation to manifest. and while we may see a further crash (stocks are only down 5% from their peak so it is way too soon to predict that) the entire situation feels much more manageable now.

Moreover anyone with healthy gains in stocks and RE can cash them in, and that will be real money.

But I am all in favor of pain, as long as that pain is shared, and that doesn’t mean that Mission district tenants get spared either.

Right, I see, the “pain”, i.e. the consequences of the crimes of Wall St banksters should be “shared” by everyone, i.e the workers and your tenants.

Unfortunately, the workers and your tenants have borne all the pain. The Wall St crooks and the beneficiaries of their bail-out –eg landlords — get off scot-free, with their assets artificially propped up at worker expense.

How generous of you to endorse letting manufacturing companies that provide jobs to the 99% should be let to fail.

I’m no big fan of GM, but it had little to nothing to do with the bubble or its collapse, and even though some jobs were saved, the restructuring hosed the unions, which should have you swooning with joy.

In place of QE2 blowing a bigger bubble QE2, there should have been an orderly restructuring of the finance racket, and the revocation of Gramm-Leach-Bliley and the commodities Modernization Act of 2000.

For a fraction of the hundreds of billions of dollars paid directly to bankrupt AIG and Wall St banks, the economy could have been reorganized and made stable and productive once again,. Instead, we doubled-down on the unstable and extractive Ponzi financialized economy of the 1%, with the absolute guarantee of another bigger collapse in the near term.

Once again, our wall St overlords and their suckerfish beneficiaries will have to bailed out at great and extractive expanse to society.

There is plenty of money for affordable, social housing. It is a question of priorities. At least half the federal budget goes to war making, weapons systems and servicing the associated debt. In fact, the US government builds affordable housing without mortgages all the time when it builds housing for military personnel stationed in the United States and in over 150 other countries.

The private sector will not build affordable housing because too many players have to take their cut of the action, most notably the banking sector which makes the cost of housing about twice the actual construction costs.

The White House is public housing. 35 years of funding cuts for public and subsidized housing have decimated their production. Only a sea change in funding priorities will begin to alleviate this deficit and help stem the crisis.

Or you could take some responsibility yourself and start up a non-profit, secure funding, and then buy up every building that is being Ellis’ed, rescind the eviction notices and run those buildings as going concerns.

Or you could form a housing trust or co-op and run it as a non-profit.

All valid idea that do not require the wholesale demolition of our federal government priorities.

At any rate, we have no control over federal priorities and can only do what the state allows us to do, with money raised in taxes from willing local voters.

So again, what are you waiting for? Get started with these funding ideas and provide a housing alternative.

No personal comment at all. I was simply pointing out that the legal infrastructure already exists to do what you suggest. You do not need any changes to law.

If the voters do not support it enough to ensure public funds then that is another matter, implying that you have not yet won that debate.

Why not talk to banks, float revenue bonds or offer public subscriptions? If your idea is good, success will follow. I am aware of two buildings run as co-ops – it’s entirely viable if the will is there. Heck, i’d even consider selling you a building if I thought you could make a success of it, at a market price though of course.

yes, notice the international panic as the Fed scales back from $85/billion per month to “only” $65 billion. The cratering of stocks is Wall St holding a gun to Yellen and Obama,, threatening “blood in the streets” if the Masters of them Universe aren’t allowed to create as much phony paper as possible, and then sell it back to the American taxpayer.

This is what capitalism has become: a kleptocracy run by a bank-mafia elite. producing nothing, capable only of extortion, and extracting all value out of the economy for itself and a few suckerfish parasites.

And we are supposed to be “grateful” that the economy didn’t completely collapse in 2009? This is the only solution, to re-up and give the addict and even bigger dose of what nearly killed him?

I was the one providing substance in the form of actual statistics rather than emotive terms like 2turmoil” and “rout” which are little more than attempts to sensationalize normal market volatility to sell stories.

The S&P 500 is down a little under 6% this year. Emerging Markets (known for their volatility) are down about 18% from their high.

The markets have only begun to “correct,” and there will be probably be several deadcat bounces on this roller coaster.

The point is, without the Fed bailout via suppressed interest rates and direct purchase of extremely over-valued paper, the DOW would be around 8,000-9,000 (where it would be if it had followed its historic rate of growth w/ solid P/E ratios), and the associated spin-off asset bubbles — eg and especially property — would be toast.

Without QE2, loose money speculative babies like Groupon, Zynga, Twitter, Yelp, et al, would have to turn a profit or go away, and so would their employees, and upward pressure on rents in SF — artificially propped up via QE2 — would return to normal.

QE2 is the best thing that ever happened to you, John. Without it, you’re hosed. Instead of begrudging workers, taxpayers, and your tenants, you should thank those who have sacrificed so that you can enjoy the.benefits of QE2.

TwoBeers, if you truly knew how to predict markets, you’d become a billionaire very quickly. Since I’m fairly sure you are not, I think we can safely throw your stock market predictions in with in various tipsters, pundits, prognosticators and charlatans all who have been wrong far more times about the market than been right.

If I have made money out of QE2 it is because I predicted it and so was able to profit from it. Others could not and did not.

You appear to wish financial doom on the nation just so you can continue to enjoy the cheap rents that would ensue from that.

It won’t happen, of course, but I do have some good news for you. If you really want to live in a financially ruined city so that you can enjoy cheap housing then there is a way.

It’s called Detroit, it’s already bankrupt, you can buy a home for a dollar, and I think you’d be much happier there.

You have it exactly backwards. The status quo is financial doom for the 99% of the nation. A properly restructured financial sector would be great for Main St and the 99%, but not as profitable for Wall St and Landlord Lane. Things are great for you, and in your sociopathy, you don’t see that the policies that benefit you are disastrous for most Americans. You’re conflating your own pocketbook with the pocket book of the 99%. What you think is “financial doom” would actually be the possibility of a hopeful future for working people.

Quit being disingenuous, John. I never said the government should have done nothing; I specifically said that there should have been a restructuring of the financial system, instead of making it whole at taxpayer expense and with the massive moral hazard of no prosecutions.

The financial system was restructured. Lehman went bust, Fannie/Freddie were effectively nationalized as was AIG and Citi. Wells bought Wachovia, BofA bought Merrill and JPMorgan bought Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual.

Letting all the financial institutions fail would have been a disaster but nationalizing all banks would have been even more expensive.

Iceland let all it’s banks fail and that wasn’t a riotous success either.

The Bush/Obama solution (there wasn’t much difference between them) was a compromise between doing nothing and doing too much.

We cannot control what governments do. We can only control how we invest to profit from what they do do.

craigslist has many entries. Do a search and you’ll see. Here’s the first 9 from this morning. You are correct, the other one I posted went fast. here’s more affordable housing to go after. They do exist. You just have to be willing to live outside of the best area in the city.

But no self-respecting white liberal hipster would ever want to live in Bayview, Excelsior or Ingleside.

No, not only do they demand the right to live in the world’s favorite city even though they cannot afford it, but they demand the right to live in an achingly hip neighborhood with cool, non-chain stores, bars and restaurants nearby, and with great people watching of self-important inhabitants from their sun-drenched deck.

Everyone in the country should have the right to a heavily subsidized lifetime-lease on a bijou apartment steps from humming Valencia Street. don’t worry – somebody else will be happy to subsidize you.

You keep bringing up alternative neighborhoods to the Mission that are much smaller in population and have a different housing mix. The Mission District has many privately owned apartment buildings. The Excelsior, Bayview and Ingleside districts have few such buildings. The housing stock in the outer neighborhoods is predominately single and two family housing with perhaps an illegal in-law apartment in a garage or backyard shed.

The subtext of landline’s comment is that he doesn’t want to rent a SFH or condo because there is no rent control there, so he might have to pay all of the cost of his housing services rather than just part of them.

But I’m equally sure that he has an idea of the kind of neighbors that he would like to have, and those outlying areas do not have his favored type.

Of course, the city should be building higher densities out in the cheaper neighborhoods as well.

Commenters suggest moving into neighborhoods that have very few units compared to the Mission District. Your above list includes a $1300 room in a 2BR apartment as affordable? Last time, we needed an apartment in 2005, the “affordable” choices were grim–converted basements and garages, flats with unlevel “hardwood” floors actually made of plastic. Through great effort, we were able to find a nice place at an affordable (to us) rent, probably because the street was considered dangerous, and the only listing was a “For Rent” sign on the building. In just eight and a half years, our then market rent is probably half of today’s market rent while wages are hardly increasing.

I shudder to think about the present rental market. Young people share SRO rooms in bunk beds with strangers. $800 to split a bedroom with another single person in a multi-bedroom shared apartment. $1400 for an insecure Tenderloin studio. The horror stories I hear are startling.

@John, as usual, you are misrepresenting my comment in order to make a personal attack. I described the housing stock in your alternative neighborhoods because the difference means that there aren’t many available rental units, end of story.

Incoming kids today may indeed struggle to find a cheap flat if they restrict themselves to the hipper neighborhoods.

But there clearly are cheaper opportunities to the south of the city, not to mention of course the vast hinterland beyond SF, including Oakland that ahs many under-utilized houses and buildings, and rents at about half the SF level.

So you can find an affordable home but only if you aren’t too snobbish about where you live and are willing to invest a little effort into commuting.

Of course, the bigger question is why people like that are moving to SF in the first place. If it’s not for a job that pays enough to live in a cool neighborhood, then maybe they should not come in the first place?

not everyone can afford to live in the world’s favorite city and, personally, I have more compassion for those raised here than those who aspire to live here because it is cool.

Landline, you need to do your homework. Go search the mission district for housing at $1500 or less. The mission hasn’t had a posting since January. If you do the same search in Excellsior or Bayview, many available units are showing up each and every day. MORE units are available in these areas than the mission even though the mission has more housing in general. People are just being snobs, plain and simple. Either they got their nose buried in their smartphone or it’s stuck up in the air above everyone else.

Wrong, search SF for max 1500$ and look at the map. The southern part of the city has < 10 listings, many of which are a room for 1000+. The bulk of the 283 listings in this category are in the tenderloin, and anyone who has lived here long enough knows that is not an option for normal working people. 59 are listed for anza heights but that looks bogus.

Can you imagine the competition for these few places at the low end?

SF has a student population in the tens of thousands, and there is not much student housing. SF needs to shut down all schools and universities since young people are not welcome here.

As for all the district 9 owners, good for you. I suggest you post your addresses so all your lovely neighbors can personally congratulate you on your piggy back rise to affluence. And don't forget to cash in on airbnb, free money!

That’s great for techies working downtown but fails for students at SFSU, CCSF, UCSF, USF and so on.

A little gritty? Cheap? These are highly subjective terms, more like realtor spin-speak.

Plus what parent would knowingly house their young students in west Oakland? On top of that where are the displaced from Oakland supposed to go, do you have suggestions there as well? Let’s move the whole country to make room for the new wealth elites!

$1400 for a studio ain’t cheap. Citing the exceptional relatively reasonably priced rental listing doesn’t change the reality of a very expensive rental market. Besides, the focus of this article is the efforts of existing residents who already afford the neighborhood banding together to maintain their residencies, not the plight of newcomers moving to the area.

I challenge anyone to walk from West Oakland to downtown San Francisco in the same time that I can walk from the southern part of the Mission district to the same spot.

The West Oakland idea was cited as being preferable to the far southern and western parts of SF that some here had been recommending as affordable. And of course West Oakland has BART and the bridge. (You cannot walk from West Oakland to SF in ant event).

$1,400 a month is $16,800 a year or about 20% of the median gross SF family income, and so is as affordable as anywhere in SF.

These protesters are nuts. We desperately need the housing, and this building would help transform one of the slummiest and most dangerous corners of the neighborhood. We need 10 more of these in the Mission– build it now please.

If people are so gung-ho for low-income housing, go live in the Sunnydale or Potrero Hill public housing projects. Market-rate apartment buildings are not going anywhere, so either get a better job and pay up or move to Oakland.

That fund on;y builds a tiny amount of housing. It has little overall impact on housing affordability. It’s more like a lottery that benefits a few lucky winners.

The vast amount of homes in SF were and are built by developers who risk their own capital. That supply is inadequate because of the obstacles and costs imposed by land use rules and the prevalence of NIMBYism.

Semantics. Only developers build housing in amounts that have any material impact on housing affordability.

I’d be willing to bet that every home you’ve had in SF was built by a speculator and owner by a private owner or landlord. Feel free to express your gratitude for speculators making your SF dream possible.